“Israel’s goodness exposes tyrants: hatred endures because Jewish chosenness threatens corrupt Arab regimes and terror networks.”
For nearly four millennia, the world’s strangest and most irrational obsession has endured: an unexplainable fixation on a people who make up less than a quarter of one percent of humanity. No massacre in Syria triggered global demonstrations. No Arab dictatorship’s slaughter of innocents stirred outrage. Yet when Israel defends its children from terrorists who proudly sacrifice their own, critics explode with fury.
This hatred is not logical; it is spiritual. The disproportionate scrutiny and rage directed at Jews makes no sense unless one understands the ancient truth: Israel is the people chosen to illuminate the world with morality, conscience, and Divine purpose. And for those who thrive on darkness, nothing is more infuriating than light.
The tragedy is compounded by historical amnesia. Gaza was emptied of every last Jew in 2005. Its people elected Hamas in 2006. Billions in aid were poured into Gaza, yet instead of schools and prosperity, Hamas built tunnels and rockets. Checkpoints exist because terrorism exists. Demands for an airport in a terror-run enclave would place every Israeli civilian under airborne threat. Still, Israel—not the regimes that weaponize their own children—is condemned.
Jewish chosenness is not supremacy; it is responsibility. Anyone, from any ethnicity, may join this mission by choosing Judaism. What makes Jews “chosen” is not power—it is humility, moral burden, and accountability. The closer one comes to G-d, Jewish tradition teaches, the smaller the ego becomes. True chosenness is not entitlement; it is service.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi expressed this radically humble vision in 1798 after enduring arrest, slander, and persecution. Upon his miraculous acquittal, he did not boast. He did not retaliate. Instead, he urged his followers to become more humble. Kindness from Heaven, he taught, does not inflate a Jew—it reduces him. Katonti—“I am small.” Only someone who stands in the presence of the Infinite feels no need to stand above others.
This humility defines the Jewish mission: not domination, but illumination. Not arrogance, but accountability. Not conquest, but conscience.
And this, perhaps, explains the rage. Israel’s survival—and the Jewish people’s impossibly enduring moral voice—exposes the failures, corruption, and cruelty of the regimes and terror groups arrayed against them. Israel reminds the world that goodness is possible. And some powers cannot stand that reminder.
To be chosen is to be hated, because to carry light is to expose darkness.
And Israel carries it still.
